Season 2, Episode 7: ‘1:00 P.M.’
It’s hard to have a heart-to-heart on a helipad.
Rushing to the hospital roof to help treat a trauma patient coming in on a helicopter, Dr. Langdon finds himself alone in an elevator with his estranged mentor, Dr. Robby. The short ride passes in silence. By the time Langdon works up the courage to start making small talk, they have exited the elevator, and he must already raise his voice over the buzz of the incoming copter’s propellers.
Following the 12 steps, Langdon, a recovering addict, must make amends with Dr. Robby for betraying his trust by stealing medication. “I’m just going to say it: I’m sorry,” he tells Robby — but he doesn’t say it, he shouts it, because by now the helicopter is landing and the buzz of the blades has become a roar.
Buffeted by the wind generated by the propellers, Robby listens, tells Langdon he is happy he got help … then says he isn’t sure he wants Langdon working in his E.R. Seconds later, both men are racing to save their new patient’s life — though Robby grills Langdon relentlessly throughout the subsequent treatment, as if waiting for Langdon to make a mistake and justify his distrust. Langdon’s judgments prove sound, but he appears close to cracking under the pressure.
Robby and Langdon’s helicopter-soundtracked conversation is the centerpiece scene for this week’s episode of “The Pitt.” It’s a major step forward for one of this season’s most important story lines, featuring two of the show’s most prominent characters, set against a “swimmer vs. propeller” boating injury severe enough to require a helicopter for transportation. It’s an attention grabber no matter how you slice it.
The sequence also shows how the Pitt’s close quarters and insane work rate force people together, even when one or both would prefer to stay away. It’s doing astute character work in the process: The din of the chopper blades helps to mask the vulnerability of both men in that moment. Could Langdon have chosen the helipad to bare his soul, even unconsciously, for that very reason?
In terms of filmmaking, the emotional heat of the moment is matched by the heightened sensory intensity of the helicopter landing — the noise, the wind, the yelling, the dramatic rooftop setting. All together, this is “The Pitt” at its best.
The same can be said of the case that provides the episode’s most consistent through line. As the E.R.’s only on-duty sexual assault nurse examiner, or SANE, Dana steps down from her usual charge nurse duties to treat a victim named Ilana (Tina Ivlev). A SANE does more than care for a patient’s physical injuries and emotional trauma: These nurses are trained to collect evidence to pass to the police if charges are filed.
The process is exhaustive, and exhausting, taking the duration of the episode; by the time the closing credits roll, it still isn’t over. Alana, who was attacked by a man she considered a friend at a Fourth of July barbecue, does not feel she can go through with the exam any longer. Dana convinces her to take a break and think it over, sending her off for snacks with Nurse Emma.
Then Dana — unflappable Dana, mother hen Dana, trained SANE nurse Dana, Dana who gritted her teeth and came back to work after being assaulted by a patient — breaks down and cries.
So did I. “The Pitt” has the power to break a viewer in its back pocket: Simply take the toughest, most seasoned, most beloved characters on the show and break them. It worked in Season 1, with Robby’s post-traumatic stress from the Covid pandemic. It works here, too — and the case is not over yet. Dana will have to pull herself together and get back to work, performing one of the most sensitive and important tasks in emergency medical care.
If “The Pitt” leaves you wondering “How can someone possibly do that and carry on?,” it is doing its job.
Some of the Pitt’s crew find unhealthy ways to deal with the stress. Still overwhelmed by her caseload and her charting backlog, Santos unexpectedly works magic with the unhappy baby left behind in the restroom. By contrast, she basically blows off her deaf patient the moment their remote interpreting gadget goes on the fritz and a new translator can’t be found. (Princess, who speaks halting A.S.L., has taken over Dana’s charge nurse role and can’t help.)
On top of it all, Santos is worried that her roommate, Whitaker, is being taken advantage of by the farmer’s widow, who may or may not be his girlfriend. When she finally has a moment to use the bathroom, we see self-injury scars up and down her left thigh — a maladaptive coping mechanism for person too driven to admit she has anything to cope with.
The season’s ongoing cases provide little uplift. Overwhelmed by over $100,000 in medical debt, Mohan’s patient Mr. Diaz bolts from the hospital. Roxie, the cancer patient, keeps insisting on staying in the hospital, even as her husband asks Dr. Robby to “order her to go home.” Jada, the sister of the patient having an unexplained psychotic episode, is justifiably furious when she learns her parents hid a history of mental illness on her father’s side of the family.
I suppose there’s always the surprise appearance of the hunky Dr. Abbott (Shawn Hatosy), the overnight chief attending physician, to buoy our spirits. Abbott moonlights as a SWAT physician, treating injured cops during raids. A firefight has left one of his teammates badly injured. It has also given him a superficial wound that he treats himself, as shirtlessly as possible, as if he were Patrick Swayze in “Road House.” Al-Hashimi asks him out for a beer!
Abbott’s indisputable sexiness aside, there’s something deeply unpleasant about the camouflage tactical gear he and the other SWAT team members are wearing. It’s as if domestic law enforcement were out-and-out warfare. (The term “imperial boomerang” springs to mind, which the anticolonial poet and politician Aimé Césaire used to describe the way military violence waged abroad is then redeployed at home.) The visual feels like a pointed one given that Abbott is a veteran of America’s Middle East campaigns. Dr. Al asks him out because she worked for Doctors Without Borders in Kabul and figures they have war stories to swap.
Elsewhere, the sardonic student doctor Joy reveals that she knows a few things her try-hard colleague Ogilvie does not. Al-Hashimi places a tense-sounding phone call to a neurologist, which may partially explain why she keeps zoning out. Javadi’s father (Usman Ally) pays a visit to the Pitt to encourage her to pursue a dermatology residency. Robby tells King, who is freaking out about her coming deposition, that she is one of the best residents he has trained in years. Meanwhile, the long hot summer day continues, as patients in varying degrees of heat-related distress roll in at a steady clip, leading Langdon to create a cooling room.
Finally, one of the season’s biggest mysteries is resolved: We learn what shut down nearby Westbridge Hospital. A ransomware cyberattack has shut down two area hospitals so far. Out of an abundance of caution, the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is shutting down all its computer systems preemptively.
For the foreseeable future, the Pitt is going analog. I would ask, “What could go wrong?” But this is “The Pitt,” where the answer is always “anything and everything.”
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